This video explains how to use the Application Observation view in SysTrack to analyze application resource consumption, startup performance, version distribution, and usage details across the environment.
Video Transcript
The chart at the top of the Application Observation page shows CPU and memory averages. It is sorted by CPU because the grid below is sorted by CPU by default. If I want to sort by memory, I can click the column header in the grid to sort, and the chart will update.
The basic perspective shows general consumption and usage information about each application. If you are unsure about a column's contents, hovering your mouse over the heading will give you a description. Active Ratio, for example, tells you how much of the application's loaded time was spent actively consuming resources versus sitting idly in the background.
If your systems are experiencing longer than expected application startup times, you could see if this is a problem for just a couple of users or for the enterprise as a whole. If it's just a couple of users being affected, are they experiencing resource impacts? If the issue is for all users, it could be an application issue or even a bad add-in or plugin. Perhaps an update or bug fix is waiting to be installed, or a newer version of a plugin is available. Also, if an application is in a user's startup menu, that could cause longer startup times as well.
It's also helpful here to see the number of versions that exist in the environment. If I sort by that column, I can see that there are a lot of different versions in my environment. Since there is a blue dot in that column, clicking the value opens a window that lists the different versions. Is there a fix for an older version for which certain users have been submitting help desk tickets? Clicking on the name of the application would launch a completely different SysTrack tool, AppVision, which we will explore in another training session.
You can utilize your center menu bar to filter for a particular application or to change your perspective. Usage Summary shows whether or not the app is run under a system account and when it was first and last used. Application Workload Details allows you to see details about how much an application is being used, including number of starts and the graphic processing load. Application Startup Experience can show you which applications are causing your user machines to bog down when they're opened.